More than 200 turn out for woodchip plant session

More than 200 people turned out to hear about the proposed 35 megawatt woo-fired power plant in North Springfield Thursday.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20120225/NEWS02/702259928

Published February 25, 2012 in the Rutland Herald
More than 200 turn out for woodchip plant session

By SUSAN SMALLHEER
Staff Writer

SPRINGFIELD — Concerns about air pollution, heavy truck traffic and water usage dominated a public informational session Thursday night about the proposed 35 megawatt wood-fired power plant proposed for North Springfield.

More than 200 people packed the Springfield High School cafeteria to hear the details about the proposed wood-chip plant, a joint project of Winstanley Enterprises and Weston Solutions.

The power plant, planned for the North Springfield Industrial Park next to Winstanley’s existing industrial building, was touted as a state-of-the-art wood-fired plant, but many residents were openly skeptical and critical of the proposal.

Adam Winstanley, president of Winstanley Enterprises, said his goal was to make power, create jobs in Springfield, and to “revitalize” the North Springfield industrial park.

A solar farm generating a similar amount of power wouldn’t create jobs, Winstanley said, and would produce much higher-priced power.

Solar systems typically produce power in the range of 30 cents per kilowatt hour, while biomass plants produce power in the 8- to 12-cent range, according to the state’s green power tariffs.

Under the Winstanley plan, not just electricity would be generated, but a high-temperature steam “loop” would be built to provide low-cost heat and cooling to tenants in the district.

But many residents of North Springfield, a small community within the town of Springfield, were politely hostile to the project, saying it would create more air pollution than the coal-fired Mount Tom power plant in Massachusetts.

They also expressed doubts that the town of Springfield water system, and the local aquifer, could support water usage estimated at 500 gallons a minute, upward of 700,000 gallons a day.

Winstanley consultants said the plant would create air particulate pollution, but said it would be greatly reduced by filtering systems. Much of the air pollution would be dissipated via the plant’s 140-foot-tall stack, said consultant Dale Raczynski.

Winstanley said the pollution created by the dozens of daily truck trips would create less pollution than the 1,200 cars that used to stream into the former Fellows plant.

Maggie Kelly, a North Springfield resident and member of North Springfield Action Group, which opposes the project, said she couldn’t believe the project would create so much air pollution.

Kelly said she had compared the North Springfield emissions with the Mount Tom coal-fired plant outside Holyoke, Mass., and found the coal-fired plant was “cleaner” than the wood-fired plant.

Kelly said afterward that the company’s own studies showed that it would emit more carbon dioxide than the Mount Tom plant.

She also raised questions about how much truck traffic the small and narrow roads in North Springfield could support, and asked who would pay for the widening of County Road, the main access point to the industrial park.

Raczynski said coal was not a source of renewable power, and that the woodchip plant’s emissions per megawatt were lower than the Mount Tom plant. He noted that “dirtier than coal” was inaccurate and misleading.

While the plant would be burning 100,000 pounds of woodchips per hour, it only produces nine pounds of particulate per hour, with fabric filters removing “99.9” percent of the particulate.

“Why would Springfield approve a plant than is dirtier than a coal plant?” Kelly asked.

There is no local vote on the project, although the Springfield Development Review Board will review the steam loop.

Winstanley, head of a real estate development firm with a long list of successes in Vermont and elsewhere, said test wells on site could provide much of the water, and the project would purchase any other water from the town.

A Winstanley consultant said that up to 10 percent of the water needs would come from collecting the water from the nine-acre roof of the former Fellows Corp. building, which Winstanley now owns.

Jean Willard, a longtime North Springfield resident, said she was very worried about the water demands on the town system.

But Winstanley countered that Springfield’s water usage had plummeted from a high of 1.3 million gallons daily during the height of the machine tool industry, to a current low of about 800,000 gallons a day.

Jeff Nelson, a hydrologist and Winstanley consultant, said most of the water would go into cooling the plant and creating steam, and couldn’t be recycled.

The wood for the plant would generally come from a 30-mile radius, and initially would largely come from New Hampshire, with much of the traffic coming up Route 103 via Chester.

Winstanley said the wood-fired fire plant would add 48 trucks a day, the Winstanley building at 36 Precision Drive, which houses three business, sees 200 trucks a day, with 250 employees

Once the project is approved by the Public Service Board, construction would take about 18 months and employ 600 people during construction, with 30 people the full-time crew. The plant would spend $12 million a year on wood, and construction of the plant is estimated to cost at least $100 million.

A site visit by the Vermont Public Service Board is slated for 1 p.m. Tuesday, with a public hearing on the project Tuesday evening at Springfield High School, starting at 7 p.m.